Strange New Worlds VIII

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “He has been restrained for his own safety,” Glorell answered calmly. “He was scratching himself until he bled.”

  Shaking her head as if to clear away the image before her, Beverly placed her hand on Jean-Luc’s arm. He screamed and tried to roll away from her.

  “Touching his skin burns him,” Glorell informed her.

  Doctor Crusher pulled her hand back. Then, pushing her emotions away, she pulled her tricorder out of her pocket and went to work.

  * * *

  Do you sense any duplicity, Glorell? Sebridge asked telepathically. He was in his office, a few blocks from the hospital, but his mind was focused on Doctor Crusher. He would normally pick up any signs of deception, but this situation was difficult. The Federation had never sent humans to Ka’Tral before, so Sebridge didn’t know enough about them to know whether or not they could shield their thoughts.

  No, Prime Minister. The human’s horror and concern are genuine. She is frightened and doesn’t know what has happened to her captain.

  So the chief medical officer is unaware of any conspiracy to obtain information the Ka’Tral are not willing to share, Sebridge thought, that is a relief. But what about this android they want to send down? Do we let him beam down to the mines? Captain Picard collapsed near the north shaft. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near that area. So the question is, did he foolishly wander off, or did he seek out that area for some other reason. Sebridge frowned. He wanted Ka’Tral to be accepted into the Federation. Once it was a member, its access to other worlds would expand exponentially, and with that access, their trade.

  What do you want me to tell the Enterprise? Glorell asked. They want an answer.

  Very well, their android can inspect the cave, Sebridge responded. But I see no reason why he should examine the exact place where the captain was found. Tell the guards to escort him to a location near the south entrance, where the captain should have been.

  * * *

  Data walked behind the guards, constantly moving his tricorder back and forth as they passed several intersecting shafts. His readings indicated that most of the shafts were indeed almost one thousand years old, their mineral and alloy content consistent with that of other planets in the sector. There were a few shafts, however, that had been constructed within the last five years, and those were the ones that produced the readings that Data found interesting. His tricorder, like the one Captain Picard had taken into the mine, was specially calibrated to detect chemicals used in all known biological weapons. Many of these chemicals were present, but in amounts so small the Ka’Tral could easily explain them away. Suddenly the men stopped and pointed at a place on the ground. Data looked at the tricorder.

  “Am I to understand this is where Captain Picard collapsed?” Data asked into a small communicator Glorell had given him. The interpreter had instructed him to say what he wanted into the communicator. Glorell would either respond the same way or instruct the guards to do as Data requested.

  After a moment, the men nodded and pointed again. Data adjusted the settings on the tricorder. They were clearly not telling him the truth. Captain Picard had never been near this location. He stooped and picked up the tricorder the captain had taken with him. It was pressed against a rock. Data quickly confirmed that the memory had been erased. If it was a normal tricorder, they would never know what the captain had found before he collapsed. This one had been modified to store information in two locations, and Data had confirmed that both were in working order before giving the tricorder to his captain. What he had been unable to check, but had obviously worked, was the overload feature. When the readings on the tricorder reached a level that could be produced only by the presence of substantial amounts of the designated chemicals, it shorted itself out, separating the two memories and activating the nanites that had been stored in the captain’s mechanical heart.

  “I would like to see Captain Picard now,” Data said, looking around to confirm nothing else had been planted for him to find. No one moved for several seconds; then the guards motioned for him to follow them.

  A few minutes later, he stood before his captain. As he looked at the shrunken, trembling man on the bed, Data acknowledged that it was a good thing he was not human. If he had human emotions, he would have been overwhelmed with guilt and anguish over his role in the mission.

  “It’s like he developed full-blown Irumodic syndrome,” Doctor Crusher said. “All the symptoms are there. But it just doesn’t happen like this. It takes years to develop. And he only had a predisposition to developing it anyway.”

  “Perhaps he should be transported to sickbay.”

  “I’ve told Glorell that, but he says the prime minister must okay the transfer. We’re waiting for a response from him.”

  Data looked at the captain, his internal clock telling him that Picard had only two hours and twenty-seven minutes before the effects of the nanites would be irreversible. It was his responsibility to save the captain’s mind if at all possible, but he could not endanger the mission in doing so. He turned back to Doctor Crusher.

  “I will beam back to the Enterprise with the captain’s tricorder. Perhaps we can retrieve something that will tell us what happened to him.” And, he thought, cognizant of the fact that the internal dialogue of his positronic brain was safe from telepathic minds, the sooner I can send Starfleet the readings, the sooner I can try to save the captain.

  * * *

  Agony. Blood. Dark. Burning. Death.

  Glorell turned his thoughts from the captain and watched Doctor Crusher. He had been reading her mind as she examined Captain Picard and was impressed with her ability to separate herself from her emotions. It was only when the thought of Irumodic syndrome came into her mind that fear overtook her for a moment. He had quickly contacted Sebridge and requested information on the condition.

  A defect in something called the parietal lobe, Sebridge had informed him shortly after the android left. There are many resulting disorders, and most of them have the same symptoms as Captain Picard. It usually takes years to reach this stage, but perhaps one of the chemicals in the mine triggered it.

  So you believe this is what he has?

  Sebridge sighed. I don’t know. You’re there, what you do think?

  Glorell closed his eyes and searched Doctor Crusher’s mind. The captain’s lack of response to anything she had done was alarming her. Frustration was growing. He found what he was looking for and withdrew. He didn’t need to read her thoughts to know she and Picard had a relationship in addition to the one they shared as chief medical officer and captain.

  It doesn’t matter what I believe, he told Sebridge. She believes he has it.

  * * *

  It took almost an hour for the prime minister to approve the transfer and for Captain Picard to be beamed to the Enterprise’s sickbay. Doctor Crusher put him directly into stasis. It wouldn’t help his condition, but she needed to buy some time to figure out what had happened.

  Immediately upon his return to the Enterprise, Data had begun retrieving the data from a second memory capsule inside the tricorder. While he waited for the information to complete downloading, he sent a subspace message to the Vortex, a medical ship that only he knew was hiding on the other side of the moon he had been scanning earlier in the day. Starfleet Intelligence had determined the moon was out of the Ka’Tral’s telepathic range, and one of the scientists waiting on the Vortex was the woman who had designed the nanites that had incapacitated Captain Picard. She had also designed the nanites that could cure him.

  When the captain’s transfer was approved, Data had hurried to supervise the transport, specifically looking for indications that a biological weapon might have been planted somewhere on either Captain Picard or Doctor Crusher. He was unaware of anything happening that might have made the Ka’Tral suspicious enough to risk killing the crew of the Enterprise, but the chemicals the tricorder had detected were identical with those used on several of the planets on the Ka’Tral’s trade rou
te. If word got out the Ka’Tral were trading in biological weapons, they had more to lose than just membership in the Federation. They therefore had strong incentive to make sure that kind of information never left the planet.

  Once the captain was in stasis, Data requested to speak privately with Commander Riker and Doctor Crusher.

  “This better be important,” Beverly said as the door swished open and she entered the captain’s ready room. “I should be down with the captain.”

  Data waited until she sat down to recite the dialogue lines he had been given almost a year earlier. “The medical ship Vortex is in the vicinity. Doctor Toby Russell, who is a leading expert in Irumodic syndrome, is aboard. I believe . . . ”

  “No,” Beverly said, shaking her head. “We’ve encountered her before. She’s too willing to experiment on her patients. She almost killed Worf.”

  “But ultimately, she saved his life.”

  “Ultimately, his Klingon anatomy saved his life,” Beverly argued.

  Data turned to Commander Riker, who returned his look in silence, and suddenly realized he had a decision to make. Starfleet had given him a script to follow, but it had not provided the script to the other two key players. If he simply tried to press the issue of taking the captain to Doctor Russell, their arrival there might be too late. He could not endanger the mission, but he found himself unwilling to sacrifice Captain Picard.

  He tapped his combadge. “Bridge, what is the distance between the Enterprise and Ka’Tral?”

  “Data,” Commander Riker said from behind the captain’s desk. “What is going on?”

  Data waited for the response from the bridge before speaking. “The Ka’Tral is the most powerful telepathic species Starfleet has ever encountered. At our present rate of speed, your minds will not be safe from them for another twenty-seven minutes.”

  “What does that have to do with Captain Picard?” Riker asked.

  Data paused, uncertain how to proceed. Finally, he said it as simply as possible. “I cannot answer your questions for another twenty-six minutes, thirty-eight seconds. In the meantime, I must recommend that we go to emergency warp and take the captain to Doctor Russell.”

  Riker sat back and looked at Data for a long moment. “You’re asking me to blindly trust you, Data? No questions asked?”

  Doctor Crusher looked directly into Data’s face. “Are you telling us that the captain’s best chance at recovery is with Doctor Russell?”

  He nodded.

  Beverly turned back to Riker. “Glorell was reading my mind as I beamed in. I didn’t like that. And while I don’t trust Toby Russell, I trust Data. If he says we need to do this and he can’t tell us why, then as chief medical officer, I recommend we do it.”

  Riker drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair and looked at Data. Finally, he rose and walked around the desk. “Data, I’m going to be down in sickbay with the captain. You have command of the Enterprise. For the next twenty-six minutes, nineteen seconds anyway.”

  Data almost sprinted onto the bridge, barking out commands and hurrying to the captain’s console. Within seconds, he created an encrypted message to Starfleet headquarters listing the biogenic components the tricorder had detected in the mines. It was an impressive list by anyone’s standards. The Federation had been trying for months to get definite information regarding several allegations that the Ka’Tral were creating biological weapons and selling them to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, Ka’Tral telepathic abilities were so strong it was virtually impossible to send an informant into their midst.

  Then the Ka’Tral had announced the reopening of mines that had been sealed for almost eight hundred years. In an unusual move, they had invited several archaeologists from the galaxy to be the first visitors into the mines. Starfleet, of course, had wasted no time in obtaining an invitation for Jean-Luc Picard. Not only did he have a solid reputation in the archaeological community, but he also had a genetic predisposition to develop a terrible disease that would render his mind unreadable. That was where Doctor Russell had come into the equation.

  Data contacted the Vortex. Even though the seven scientists on the Vortex knew about Captain Picard’s condition, he spoke as if they did not, keenly aware that other people on the bridge would hear the conversation. “Doctor Russell, Captain Jean-Luc Picard has developed symptoms of severe Irumodic syndrome. I will have Doctor Crusher send you all the data we have at this time. We should be able to transport him to your ship in twenty-five minutes.”

  “How long since he collapsed, Data?” Doctor Russell asked.

  “According to the captain’s tricorder, five hours, eighteen minutes ago.”

  Doctor Russell gasped. “Five hours, eighteen minutes. He’s almost out of time.”

  Data did not reply. In twenty-five minutes, the captain’s chance of full recovery would be less than thirty-three percent. Reflecting on the events of the last five hours and eighteen minutes, he did not see anything he could have done to minimize the amount of time necessary to recover the captain and the tricorder.

  “Optimize your transporter beam and get him over here,” Doctor Russell ordered.

  “It would not be one hundred percent safe, but I believe we could narrow . . . ”

  “I’m a neurogeneticist, not an engineer,” Doctor Russell said. “And quite frankly, we don’t have time for this lesson. Just do what you can to get him here. His life . . . or at least a life worth having . . . depends on it.”

  * * *

  Doctor Beverly Crusher sat at the computer terminal in the Vortex sickbay studying the test protocols and results on the nanites that had been injected into Captain Picard—both the instigators and the retrieval nanites. Once the Enterprise had reached the moon, she, Riker, and Data had met again in the captain’s ready room, and Data had told them everything. Everything he knew, she corrected herself. He didn’t know about a late-night talk she and Jean-Luc had had a few months after tests had shown that Irumodic syndrome might well be in his future. It was the one and only time Jean-Luc had opened up to her about the fear that woke him up in the middle of the night. The fear that he would become a frightened, delusional old man who could not remember the extraordinary life he had led or the extraordinary people he had encountered along the way. He was so afraid of losing himself, of becoming little more than an animal, she thought, and now he has.

  She forced herself to begin reading again. If there is any hope of saving Jean-Luc, it has to lie in these records. But the more she read, the more upset she became. The studies were well done, what there were of them. The nanites were nowhere near ready to be implanted in a human. No legitimate scientific study would have allowed it. Clandestine, she thought. The only reason they were used prematurely was because this was a clandestine operation. And Jean-Luc Picard gave his consent.

  “He was so excited to be among the first to view those mines,” Crusher muttered. “How could he have been so excited when he knew this might happen?”

  “He didn’t know,” Doctor Russell answered. “He was given the least amount of information possible so that when the time came to use the nanites, his mind would not give him away beforehand.”

  Doctor Crusher turned from the terminal and looked at the captain. She wished she could see the new nanites at work fighting the old ones. If the retrieval nanites won, the Enterprise would get her captain back. If the instigator nanites won, Jean-Luc Picard would almost certainly spend the rest of his days in a life-care facility, unaware that his sacrifice had saved the Federation from welcoming into its fold the makers and distributors of highly advanced biological weapons.

  “When he comes out of this,” Crusher said, refusing to even consider that he might not, “I want you to tell me all the instigator nanites were deployed or destroyed. That there are none left in his system that can be used against him later.”

  No one answered her.

  “Just what I expected from you.” Crusher stood and looked at Doctor Russell. “You don’t know th
e answer, do you? Starfleet gave you a puzzle to solve. A toy to play with. And you ran with it, unwilling or unable to look at the consequences of your work.”

  “Your captain chose the assignment,” the younger woman said, looking directly at Doctor Crusher for the first time since the three Enterprise officers had beamed over. “He could have turned it down, but he didn’t.”

  “But did he have all the information he needed to make an informed decision?” Doctor Crusher asked. “According to your own notes, you don’t know if using nanites to cause the instantaneous onset of end-stage Irumodic syndrome, even if the retrieval nanites do exactly what they’re supposed to do, will cause him to develop Irumodic syndrome later in his life. Before today, that was only a possibility. You may have made it inevitable.”

  “Let’s save the arguing and recriminations until after we know he’s all right,” Riker said, stepping closer to the biobed. “Data estimates that we missed the safe zone by at least eighteen minutes. How long until we know exactly how important those eighteen minutes were?”

  Doctor Russell ran a tricorder over the captain’s sleeping form. “We should have picked up something by now. In the simulations, we had a return to baseline brainwave function within eight minutes.”

  “But this wasn’t a simulation,” Riker said. “And the Ka’Tral didn’t alert us to the problem until three hours had passed. So we were behind the proverbial eight ball from the beginning.”

  “I don’t know the reference.” The young doctor glanced up at Riker. “But if you mean this assignment was problematic from the start, I would have to agree with you. However, now Starfleet has the information it needs to reject the Ka’Trals’ request to join the Federation, and we have discovered the source of biological weapons that have devastated several planets in this sector. Not a bad day’s work.”